Hansard

We are here to consider the report into the circumstances surrounding the elections for the Scottish Parliament and Scottish local authorities that the Parliament's Local Government and Communities Committee has produced. I am sure that all of us in the chamber will have a story to tell about those elections, and I dare say that some will be more interesting than others.

The events surrounding the count in Strathkelvin and Bearsden have featured on television several times, as it was one of the few places where the returning officer was filmed explaining what had gone wrong to those who were assembled to hear the result. I doubt whether what happened in my constituency was much different from what happened in others. There had been difficulties with the postal voting forms, and many people ended up not getting a vote because the forms arrived several days late, after people had gone off on holiday.

The count went fairly smoothly. There were some issues with spoiled papers, but that was to be expected with a new system. The problems arose when the returning officer and her staff thought that they had the result and tried to send it to the central computer for verification. Despite the best efforts of all those who were involved, the two computers just would not talk to each other. They tried for almost three hours to make it work, but to no avail. At 4 am, the returning officer had to send us all home, asking us to return at midday, by which time they hoped to have fixed the problem. Naturally, all the candidates were disappointed that we could not have the result declared.

When I expressed my displeasure at the turn of events, my daughter summed up the situation neatly by saying, "Look on the bright side, Dad. At least you will come back knowing that you have won. Imagine having to come back knowing that you had lost." Finally, at around 2.30 in the afternoon, the result was duly declared and, to their great credit, all my opponents turned up to hear it read out. I thought of applying to the Guinness book of records, to see whether anyone had waited longer between knowing the result and having it made public, but I did not do so.

That is my story. There were lots of other stories about spoiled ballot papers, postal votes that did not turn up and general confusion about how the ballot papers were presented to the public. Indeed, in his report, Mr Gould took all politicians to task when he said that all parties had to accept their share of the blame for what went wrong; no single individual or party was to blame. It was in that spirit that the members of the Local Government and Communities Committee undertook their task of considering the Gould report and reporting back to us. I commend them for their work.

As has been said, the committee's starting point was the motion that the Parliament passed on 10 January. It said that both the Scottish Parliament and Westminster should discuss, agree and publish a timetable for appropriate implementation of the Gould report recommendations, having regard to the conclusions of both the Local Government and Communities Committee and the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee.

I turn to the Local Government and Communities Committee's recommendations. First, there is the question of decoupling the elections. Since the Parliament was formed, it has been the practice to hold Scottish Parliament elections and local government elections on the same day. Last year, that was felt to cause confusion, because of the introduction of a new voting system for local authorities. The committee has endorsed the decision of the Parliament that the elections should be decoupled and has recommended that local government elections should eventually be held two years after those for the Scottish Parliament. I am sure that all members could get into a spirited debate with council colleagues about that issue. Suffice it to say that some of my more experienced colleagues at East Dunbartonshire Council have said to me on more than one occasion, "I told you so." They will be pleased that Labour now supports such a move.

On the question of appointing a chief returning officer, the committee recommends further investigation of the Northern Ireland model. Labour members have no strong views either way and feel that it is an organisational issue that would be best left to the returning officers themselves.

The committee says that ballot papers should be easy to complete and should result in a fair reflection of the views of the voters. Scottish Labour no longer supports the use of a single ballot paper for constituency and list members. We would like to see a return to two separate ballot papers for the Scottish Parliament elections. We also support plans to ensure that party names on ballot papers guide the ordering of the ballot paper and that misleading party descriptions are done away with—although that would be an encouragement for someone to devise a party name beginning with A.

On voter education and engagement, Labour agrees with the committee that greater voter turnout is to be encouraged, especially in less affluent areas. We would like the Electoral Commission to undertake a comprehensive programme of improved voter information and education so that anyone who votes does not feel in any way inhibited once they arrive at the polling station. The committee has endorsed the recommendation that nominations should close 23 days instead of 16 days before polling day. We support that. There is also a recommendation that there must be more consistent and rigorous training for information officers, including equality awareness training. Our view is that returning officers could also do with some of that.

Finally, I will talk about overnight counting, which is almost where I started. The committee would like to keep the overnight count, but it says that local authorities should be consulted. Labour supports retaining overnight counting. Speaking purely personally, despite my experiences last May, I would like to keep the overnight count. Gould suggests a return to manual counting, which we support.

We endorse the call that any changes in the law that governs the conduct of elections must come into force at least six months before the elections that they affect. We also endorse the recommendation that a single legislative instrument should provide all the rules and regulations that govern the conduct of Scottish Parliament elections, alongside the guidance that the Electoral Commission issues.

As we have heard, lessons must be learned from what happened last May. The committee has done an excellent job in presenting the report. I hope that its recommendations find favour in the Parliament. As has been said, the person at the heart of the matter is the voter. Anything that we can do to improve the situation for voters must be welcome.